Here's some perspective on the issue.
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2009.02.10
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A17
BYLINE: Michael Coren
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 995
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Still kicking the Pope
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The phenomenon in Northern Ireland, Glasgow and even parts of North America known as the "Kick the Pope" band is not what once it was. In years past, these groups of anti-Catholic bigots would play their fifes, bang their drums and recite ugly sectarian songs until they could sing no more. Is the decline a sign that anti-Catholicism is diminishing? Not at all. It's just that now it wears a liberal cap rather than an orange sash.
In late-January, Pope Benedict made the courageous decision to lift the excommunication of four bishops who were illicitly consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X. One of these men, however, was a conspiracy theorist named Richard Williamson who questioned the truth about 9/11, denied the Holocaust and thought that The Sound of Music was a porn movie. In other words, he's a repugnant lunatic. But it takes more than repugnance and lunacy to earn excommunication or to have it lifted. It was not his views but the fact that he was illegally named a bishop that led to his being excommunicated, and it is not his views that have led to the removal of the same. An excommunicated person can no longer receive the sacraments. No more and no less. He cannot, for example, receive communion, be married by the Church or go to confession and be absolved of sin.
In fact, Williamson is largely irrelevant in all of this. There are up to a million supporters of the Society of St. Pius X, and Pope Benedict wants to bring them back into the mainstream of the Roman Catholic Church. It's part of a grander campaign to deal with a legion of abuses that have crept into the Church since the mid-1960s when extremists tried to exploit the reforms of The Second Vatican Council. Which is why so many of those zealots are now using the Williamson affair to attack the papacy and are spreading so many distortions and half-truths about a man who, as the guiding theologian behind Pope John Paul II, did so much to revolutionize the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.
To fail to understand these points is to misunderstand what we have seen in the past
two weeks. Most of the attacks from inside the Church and from alleged Catholics have had nothing to do with the understandable sensitivities of the Jewish community but with a deeper attack on a Pope who is despised by those who desire a weak and modernist Church -- a Church that has about as much to do with genuine Catholicism as Richard Williamson has to do with official Church teaching on the Holocaust. While Jewish groups are suspicious, they need to be aware that some of the harshest condemnations of what Pope Benedict has done are coming from a left that is usually first in criticizing Israel. Indeed the latest trend from such people is to tie in the removal of the excommunication with Benedict's speech in Regensburg
in 2006 in which he briefly and in passing repeated a medieval and entirely sensible question about the nature of Islam. As such, he was one of the few world leaders willing to challenge an ideology that is far more dangerous to Jews and pluralism than is some isolated nutcase who denies the Holocaust.
The reporting of this issue has been positively scandalous. Extended articles have been written without one supporter of the Pope being quoted but several opponents of the man given numerous paragraphs. This is partly be-cause many journalists simply do not understand Church law and politics, but there is often sheer malice involved. That the Pope was unaware of Williamson's views on the Holocaust, for example, has been interpreted to prove that he is out of touch. What actually happened was that the surprisingly small papal department dealing with this issue concentrated on the leader of the Society of St. Pius X and not Williamson. It's worth noting that even with an enormous staff, President Obama suffered three major vetting scandals in as many weeks.
While not its specific purpose, the papal initiative has led to Williamson being reprimanded by the Society of St. Pius X and told never again to write or speak about politics and history. The Vatican made it clear in an official statement that Williamson must "distance himself in an absolutely unequivocal and public manner from his positions regarding the Shoah," and Pope Benedict has yet again declared that the Holocaust was, without question, a unique and historic evil -- something it is his responsibility as Pope to do.
But he is, yes, the Pope. His role as the direct descendant of St. Peter is not to manage an international public relations corporation but to lead the Church of Jesus Christ. There are some Catholics who seem more concerned with mass popularity than with the integrity and mission of the Church. Pope Benedict upsets people when he questions the Iraq war, calls for the forgiving of Third World debt, opposes the death penalty and lambastes Western materialism. These are as papal as declaring that truth is at its most complete within Catholicism and stressing the need for unity in the Church. How tragic if we become distracted by one troubled man who, more than most, is in need of the sacraments. Particularly that of confession. - Michael Coren is host of The Michael Coren Show on CTS TV. His Web site is
www.michaelcoren.com.
